Breyer and Kennedy join Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan in the majority. Scotusblog:

Both
the admitting privileges and surgical center requirements place a
substantial obstacle in the path of women seeking a previability
abortion, constitute an undue burden on abortion access, and thus
violate the Constitution.

We'll have more as we have time to read the opinion. A very good day for once.

Most importantly, the women on the court finally got the chance to lay some facts and reality upside some freakazoid conservatard heads, and took full advantage.

You'll
recall that Sotomayor made her opinion known during oral arguments in
March, that demanding surgical centers in order to take two pills was
massively stupid. We can't quote this paragraph from Slate enough. Go read the whole thing for a feel-good about the future of SCOTUS once Madam President has a few justices added on.

It
felt as if, for the first time in history, the gender playing field at
the high court was finally leveled, and as a consequence the court’s
female justices were emboldened to just ignore the rules. Time limits
were flouted to such a degree that Chief Justice John Roberts pretty
much gave up enforcing them. I counted two instances in which Roberts
tried to get advocates to wrap up as Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and
Sonia Sotomayor simply blew past him with more questions. There was
something wonderful and symbolic about Roberts losing almost complete control over the court’s indignant women, who are just not inclined to play nice anymore.

RBG's...conclusion is designed to give today's
opinion as broad a reach as possible: ....Providers laws like H. B. 2
that “do little or nothing for health, but rather strew impediments to
abortion... cannot survive judicial inspection."

This decision is expected to affect other state's efforts to put provider restrictions in place.

Monday, June 27, 2016

The children — from Somalia, Burma and Iraq — had only been in the
United States for weeks or days. They're refugees, forced to leave their
homes because of war or persecution.

Now they were experiencing their first summer camp.

As
part of a five-week Kentucky Refugee Ministries program, more than 40
children, ranging from kindergartners to seventh-graders, are taking
morning classes in science, math, art and English. They'll also partake
in field trips, an art show and other activities planned by the
resettlement agency, which has run the camp for at least a decade.

For
the students, the program provides an opportunity to learn English,
socialize in the language and experience American classrooms, where they
are expected to participate and ask questions.

For parents, who worry about the language barrier their child will face in school, it'll ease their kids' transition this fall.

Refugee
children — who numbered roughly 600 last year in Louisville — often
struggle to integrate into their schools, said Meagan Floyd, youth
services coordinator for the agency.

Many suffer from
post-traumatic stress, such as anxiety and learning difficulties, she
said. And because their schooling abroad faced frequent disruption, they
also begin below grade level, according to the Migration Policy
Institute, a nonprofit think tank in Washington, D.C.

Sunday, June 26, 2016

Bevin: No money for working poor people to have health insurance that would save the taxpayers billions, but a blank check for freakazoids committing intellectual child abuse.

Shame on you, Herald, for the cutline "Life size Noah's Ark will wow guests with its large size" and I don't mean because that line is badly written.

First, Noah's Ark is a myth. It never existed, so it can't be "life-size." Second, as huge as that motherfucker is, it still would not hold a one-millionth of the total animals the bibble claims it did.

And third, if you're wondering why the Freedom from Religion Foundation is not all over this abomination, it's because they know the political and judicial game in Kentucky is rigged against the U.S. Constitution.

Saturday, June 25, 2016

Gov. Matt Bevin said Thursday that former Gov. Steve Beshear is “an
embarrassment” to the state and his law firm and that his son, Attorney
General Andy Beshear, opposes him because “it’s clearly genetic.”

That's the same Governor Steve Beshear who was President Barack Obama's special guest at the State of the Union, the man lauded nationwide for this foresight and courage and plain genius in implementing kynect and Medicaid expansion, the history-making leader who put Kentucky on the road to finally kill generational poverty.

Gov. Lying Coward is the one who is destroying working Kentuckians' last hopes and throwing a temper tantrum because Gov. Beshear isn't thanking him for it.

In response, former Gov. Beshear said in an email, “As a lifelong
Kentuckian who gave over 30 years of public service to the people of
this state, I have always worked to bring people together. As governor,
even when there were disagreements on issues, we were able to have
respectful and healthy discussion.

“Kentucky would be better off
if Gov. Bevin followed that philosophy and realized that name-calling
and insults do nothing to help Kentucky’s families.”

Attorney
General Beshear said in an email that he has publicly disagreed with
Bevin but has never attacked him personally. “His comments are beneath
the dignity of that office. Kentuckians deserve better.”

Is Gov. Pants-Shitter trying to emulate the Orange Menace, or is self-destructive arrogance a side-effect of being filthy rich?

Friday, June 24, 2016

I
don't have any personal axe to grind on Brexit. Except for one: I am
sick and tired of watching folks like Boris Johnson, Marine Le Pen,
Donald Trump, and others appeal to the worst racial instincts of our
species, only to be shushed by folks telling me that it's not really
racism driving their popularity. It's economic angst. It's regular folks
tired of being spurned by out-of-touch elites. It's a natural anxiety
over rapid cultural change.

Maybe
it's all those things. But at its core, it's the last stand of old
people who have been frightened to death by cynical right-wing media
empires and the demagogues who enable them—all of whom have based their
appeals on racism as overt as anything we've seen in decades. It's
loathsome beyond belief, and not something I thought I'd ever see in my
lifetime. But that's where we are.

Thursday, June 23, 2016

I
wonder how that possibly could have happened in this country. How did
we abandon our dreams of greatness that we demanded of our
self-governing Republic. We didn't dig the Panama Canal. Our government
did, after it stole the land from Colombia. We, as individuals, didn't
tame the West. Our government did, with railroads and homesteading and
the U.S. Cavalry. We didn't ourselves build the Hoover Dam. Our
government did. We didn't create our own private space exploration. Our
government did.

Wednesday, June 22, 2016

By eliminating the Medicaid expansion that has saved thousands of Kentucky lives and thousands of Kentucky health care jobs and brought billions of dollars in economic growth to the Commonwealth.

A couple of facts before we get to Bevin's lies:

Medicaid expansion covers working poor people. The ones holding down two or three minimum-wage jobs so they make too much money for basic Medicaid but not enough to get kynect subsidies.

No,
shrinking Medicaid back to the pre-Obamacare levels will not "save $2.2
billion." It will COST Kentucky taxpayers far more than $2.2 billion
in emergency care for people who no longer have health insurance and in
expensive long ambulance trips for people whose local hospital closed
because Medicaid funding disappeared.

Not to mention the dead people. Many, many dead people deliberated murdered by Governor Lying Coward.

Bevin
said if the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services does not grant
the waiver, he will still move ahead with his plan to repeal Medicaid
expansion in the state.

If the Medicaid waiver is approved, Bevin said it will result in $2.2 billion in taxpayer savings.

The
waiver is asking the federal government to allow able-bodied,
working-age people to "take ownership" of their coverage, Bevin said. He
unveiled Helping to Engage and Achieve Long Term Health, or HEALTH, where Kentucky would impose premiums on Medicaid expansion users from $1 to $15, depending on their income levels.

The new Medicaid program would put money toward drug addiction services.

The fuck it will. More taxpayer dollars will flow into the pockets of Beshear's billionaire buddies running storefront addiction clinics, but no actual services will be provided.likes

Bevin
said his plan isn't to kick people off health care but it will make
Medicaid more accessible by making it more accountable. Requiring Medicaid expansion users to pay for their own premiums will give them "dignity and respect," he said.

The program would begin as a pilot program that will be later rolled out across the state.

Monday, June 20, 2016

... is actually worse than what repugs have done to Kansas. Even Brownback hasn't neutron-bombed the state's flagship university. Yet.Charlie Pierce:

Sliding
north, we find ourselves in the failed state of Kansas, now in the
fifth year of the Brownbackian Dark Ages, as such things are reckoned.
Somehow, the fact that Kansas' status as a supply-side lab rat has
dropped the state down a political garbage chute the likes of which
hasn't been seen since they shredded the Articles of Confederation is
beginning to seep under the guardhouses of the gated communities. The
head of a healthcare company is fleeing to the Missouri border and he's
not shy about telling the world why.

It
wasn't just that Brownback was conservative; it was that he is seen as a
tool of the Koch brothers and ALEC, a conservative think tank and
lobbying organization. Brownback used his influence and funding to
eliminate "moderate" republicans from the Kansas legislature and install
his hand-picked conservative cronies. He couldn't do the same with the
Kansas Supreme Court, which has ruled a number of the conservative
legislature's laws as unconstitutional, so Brownback's administration
decided to threaten to cut off funding to the court system and is
actively pursuing legislation to impeach the Supreme Court.

Kansas
has become a test center of "trickle down" economics, espoused by
economist Arthur Laffer during the Reagan years. Nowhere has there been
as thorough an implementation of Laffer's policy recommendations… and
nowhere has there been as dramatic a failure of government. Under
Brownback's direction, Kansas implemented an unprecedented tax cut in
2012, eliminating taxes for LLCs and professional firms (for full
disclosure, PHI is a C Corporation) and making the largest cuts in the
highest tax brackets. He shifted taxes to create a heavier burden on
property and sales taxes, which typically represent a larger burden on
lower income brackets. Brownback declared that this tax cut would be a
"shot of adrenaline" for the Kansas economy, but the reality is that the
tax cuts have had the opposite effect. Kansas lags neighboring states
in job growth. For 11 of the last 12 months, Kansas has dramatically
missed revenue targets, falling deeper in debt and facing another round
of degraded bond ratings.

The worst part is that the burdens for
the shortfalls rest on the shoulders of those who can least afford it –
children and the developmentally disabled.

No kidding, tell us what you really feel.

The
funding problems got so bad that Osawatomie State Hospital's mental
health ward had to significantly cut staffing. Over 40% of their staff
positions were dormant, leaving the remaining staff overworked and
unprepared. This understaffing resulted in an improperly released
patient murdering a 61-year-old man, and a hospital worker was raped,
having to rely on other patients to save her. In January 2016, the
Osawatomie State Hospital lost its certification to provide mental
health services, cutting off federal funding that counted for roughly
half of the hospital's revenue. It is unclear what will happen to the
patients and staff at Osawatomie State Hospital, leaving the fates of
the patients in limbo.

The state's public education system, once
considered one of the best in the nation, hasn't been spared, either.
You'll hear claims from Kansas officials that funding to education is at
an all time high, but it's just an accounting trick – they chose to
shuffle money for special education and retirement funds through the
schools so it could appear as an increase on the books. Salary freezes,
underfunding to the point of being ruled unconstitutional, laws allowing
teachers to be imprisoned for introducing potentially "offensive"
content, cuts and delays in $100 million in payments to the state-run
retirement fund, and legislation specifically targeted to cripple the
Kansas teacher's union are all part of an ongoing effort to undermine
the public education system in Kansas. Instead, the Brownback
administration plans to offer vouchers to encourage families to send
their children to private and religious schools.

To double down
on these policies, Brownback is now ignoring the $250 million shortfall
predicted for 2016, instead opting for headlines about closing Kansas to
refugees and blaming the "liberal media" for the state's economic woes.

In
the end, I believe the goals of the Brownback administration are going
exactly to plan – starve the state of resources to the point where it
just makes sense to turn over critical government functions to
for-profit entities. I can't, in good conscience, continue to give our
tax money to a government that actively works against the needs of its
citizens; a state that is systematically targeting the citizens in most
need, denying them critical care and reducing their cost of life as if
they're simply a tax burden that should be ignored. It's because of
these moves that I have decided to deny Kansas revenue from Pathfinder's
taxes by moving our company to Missouri.

This
guy says it flat out–Brownback has engineered the failure of government
in Kansas to prove to himself and to the world that government
inevitably fails. It's not often that you see it made that plain, and
now it's time to point out that enough voters in Kansas showed up and
re-elected this cluck in what only can be seen now as a suicide pact.

You know Governor Lying Coward is thinking up ways he can one-up Brownback and create the Galt's Gulch libertarian paradise of the Bluegrass.

Sunday, June 19, 2016

You’ve probably seen the artist’s rendering of Ark Encounter, Ken Ham’s Biblical theme park that focuses on Noah
and the Great Flood. I’m posting it here to refresh your memory –
followed by three stills from a drone-mounted video camera. The images,
from November, show how the construction is progressing in the real
world. Notice any differences?

Saturday, June 18, 2016

We were right across the street from the motherfuckers at Fifth and Main. With their stupid "homo sex is sin" sign and their self-hating closet case screaming through a bullhorn about "penis in rectum" and the brave ones holding up rainbow flags to block them.

Then the first marchers appeared, and the cheers rose and kept rising and you couldn't hear the hate anymore.

Drag queens in shimmering dresses waved from high atop floats.
Families and their lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender loved ones
marched side by side west down Main to the parade's end at the
Belvedere. The mayor, police chief and other city leaders walked beside
them, too.

The Orlando tragedy didn't dominate the 15th annual
Kentuckiana Pride Parade, but the many groups carrying signs in memory
of the victims were a constant reminder.

Fairness Campaign
volunteers walked with the names of those killed June 11 at an Orlando
gay nightclub, the dead filling their banner. A church group carried 49
red roses attached to papers with the 49 names.

The parade comes
nearly one year after the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage
last summer. Perhaps it was that recent victory, or the aftermath of
the prior weekend that brought out thousands Friday, said Jeremy
Walsburger.

"It's wonderful to see so many people out here," he
said. His mother joined him for her first pride parade, as did many of
his coworkers.

"It was never a moment I thought we'd have
together," he said. "I'd also never thought I'd see my mayor being so
supportive. It's just not something you imagine growing up in a one
stoplight town."

Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer asked residents this week to march with him in solidarity with the LGBT community.

Toward
the end of the parade route, JJ Love, his hair done up in a curly,
rainbow Mohawk, watched the parade with his boyfriend Tim Netherton.

Love
and Netherton met at a now defunct coffee shop in downtown Lousiville,
just across the street from gay bar Tryangles. Netherton had recently
ended his 17-year marriage.

Now, more than a decade later, his
ex-wife and many of his children and grandchildren came to pride to show
their unending support.

"We want individuals to know that it's OK to just be yourself," Netherton said. "No matter what that means."

This atheist's favorite sign, carried by someone marching with a church group:

There
are no such things as independents, swing voters or undecideds. There
are repugs too embarrassed to call themselves repugs and who register as
"independent" but who always - ALWAYS - vote repug. And there are dems
who are too stupidly pure to call themselves Democratic voters and who
register as "independent" but who always - ALWAYS - vote Democratic.
When they don't sit at home on Election Day and sulk, that is.

Any
attempt by Hillary or any other Democratic candidate - like the always-moronic Democratic candidates for the Kentucky state House
- to pick up "anti-Trump" repug voters is doomed to not just fail, but
to take the entire Democratic campaign down with it through either
pissing off actual Democratic voters or giving false confidence that
this election is going to be a blowout.

Stop. Just Stop.

There are millions of loyal Democratic voters who would be happy to vote for Hillary - unless they think the election is already a dem blowout or they think they're being taken for granted.

Those are the voters you need, Hillary. Those are the voters you need to court.

If
states can drug test low-income residents seeking welfare assistance,
why can’t they do the same for members of the one percent asking for
hefty federal tax deductions?

So goes the thinking of Rep. Gwen Moore (D-WI), who spoke to the Guardian on Wednesday
about her new Top 1% Accountability Act. The bill would force taxpayers
reporting itemized deductions of over $150,000 to either submit a clear
drug test to the IRS or accept the much lower standard deduction when
filing their tax returns.

“We’re
not going to get rid of the federal deficit by cutting poor people off
SNAP,” Moore told the Guardian, referring to the Supplemental Nutrition
Assistance Program, better known as food stamps. “But if we are going to
drug-test people to reduce the deficit, let’s start on the other end of
the income spectrum.”

The Milwaukee
congresswoman's bill comes as a rebuke to Republican lawmakers and her
state’s governor, Scott Walker. A state law that went into effect in
December forces applicants for the Temporary Assistance for Needy
Families program to answer questions about their drug use, and Walker is
suing the federal government for the right to drug test Wisconsin
residents applying for SNAP benefits.

He can cite all the KRS he wants; eliminating the entire leadership of one of the state's flagship universities is the act of an out-of-control dictator.

From the press release:

Gov. Matt Bevin today
announced a reorganization of the University of Louisville’s Board of
Trustees, as established by the provisions of KRS 164.821. This
reorganization is subject to the approval of the General Assembly
in 2017.

“There have
been a number of incidents in recent months and years related to the
University of Louisville that have shed less than the best of light on
the University and the Commonwealth as a whole,” said
Gov. Bevin. “The University’s Board of Trustees, as it exists right
now, is operationally dysfunctional. Its dysfunction has precluded it
from being fiduciarily effective. Today we are going to start putting the University of Louisville house in order. A fresh
start is the right thing to do and is in the best interest of the students, faculty and staff.”

An interim
Board of Trustees has been created by Executive Order to govern the
University of Louisville as needed for the next two weeks until
permanent appointments are made to the Board of Trustees.

Man, I can't wait to see the list of rich, white, male, freakazoid wastes of oxygen ol' Lying Coward appoints.

Yes, by Clinton/Obama vs. the Orange Menace standards this isn't much of an "attack," but it's the first of Jim Gray's Senate campaign and we are chanting "hit 'im again, hit 'im again, harder, harder!"

Waving a newspaper story about last weekend’s shooting rampage in
Orlando that killed 49 people, Lexington Mayor Jim Gray on Wednesday
criticized Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., for opposing a bill that would ban gun
purchases by people on the FBI’s terrorist watch list.

“How many
headlines like this do we need to see before Congress does something?”
asked Gray, the Democratic Senate nominee, standing outside Paul’s
Lexington field office. “Senator Paul voted to let potential terrorists
buy guns. He chose to protect the rights of radical Islam over the
safety of innocent Americans. What was Rand Paul thinking? Where is his
common sense? Where’s the backbone?”

In December, the day after an extremist couple shot and killed 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif., Paul voted against a Democrat-backed bill that would have blocked the sale of guns
through licensed firearms dealers to roughly 10,000 Americans whose
names are reported to be on the secret watch list, indicating that
federal law-enforcement officials suspect them of possible terrorist
activity.

Yes, the terrorist watch list is dangerously error-ridden and suspect constitutionally, but the point is that Paul follows the repug line that there is no problem - including mass murder - that cannot be solved by MOAR GUNZ.

And that Jim Gray, occasionally suspect Democratic-ly, disagrees.

Gray, by the way, was a guest at the Fairness Alliance of Kentucky's 25th Anniversary celebration last Friday night, barely 24 hours before the Orlando massacre.

Wednesday, June 15, 2016

Yes,
these motherfuckers have always been with us and always will be, but
when the majority makes clear that they are not welcome in public, they
stay in their caves and sulk. Not even the Great Demagogue, Huey Long,
gave them the utter freedom to exercise their hatred and violence the way
Trump has.

And
let me make a final point. For a while now, the main contribution of
some of my friends on the other side of the aisle have made in the fight
against ISIL is to criticize this administration and me for not using
the phrase “radical Islam.” That’s the key, they tell us -- we can’t
beat ISIL unless we call them “radical Islamists.” What exactly would
using this label accomplish? What exactly would it change? Would it make
ISIL less committed to trying to kill Americans? Would it bring in more
allies? Is there a military strategy that is served by this? The answer
is none of the above. Calling a threat by a different name does not
make it go away. This is a political distraction. Since before I was
President, I’ve been clear about how extremist groups have perverted
Islam to justify terrorism. As President, I have repeatedly called on
our Muslim friends and allies at home and around the world to work with
us to reject this twisted interpretation of one of the world’s great
religions.

There has not been a moment in my
seven and a half years as President where we have not been able to
pursue a strategy because we didn’t use the label "radical Islam." Not
once has an advisor of mine said, man, if we really use that phrase,
we're going to turn this whole thing around. Not once. So if someone
seriously thinks that we don’t know who we're fighting, if there's
anyone out there who thinks we're confused about who our enemies are,
that would come as a surprise to the thousands of terrorists who we've
taken off the battlefield. If the implication is that those of us up
here and the thousands of people around the country and around the world
who are working to defeat ISIL aren't taking the fight seriously, that
would come as a surprise to those who have spent these last seven and a
half years dismantling al Qaeda in the FATA, for example -- including
the men and women in uniform who put their lives at risk and the Special
Forces that I ordered to get bin Laden and are now on the ground in
Iraq and in Syria. They know full well who the enemy is. So do the
intelligence and law enforcement officers who spend countless hours
disrupting plots and protecting all Americans, including politicians who
tweet and appear on cable news shows. They know who the nature of the
enemy is.

So there’s no magic to the phrase
“radical Islam.” It’s a political talking point; it's not a strategy.
And the reason I am careful about how I describe this threat has nothing
to do with political correctness and everything to do with actually
defeating extremism. Groups like ISIL and al Qaeda want to make this war
a war between Islam and America, or between Islam and the West. They
want to claim that they are the true leaders of over a billion Muslims
around the world who reject their crazy notions. They want us to
validate them by implying that they speak for those billion-plus people;
that they speak for Islam. That’s their propaganda. That's how they
recruit. And if we fall into the trap of painting all Muslims with a
broad brush and imply that we are at war with an entire religion -- then
we’re doing the terrorists' work for them.

Now, up until this point, this argument about labels has mostly just
been partisan rhetoric. And, sadly, we've all become accustomed to that
kind of partisanship, even when it involves the fight against these
extremist groups. And that kind of yapping has not prevented folks
across government from doing their jobs, from sacrificing and working
really hard to protect the American people.

But we are now seeing how dangerous this kind of mindset and this kind
of thinking can be. We're starting to see where this kind of rhetoric
and loose talk and sloppiness about who exactly we're fighting, where
this can lead us. We now have proposals from the presumptive Republican
nominee for President of the United States to bar all Muslims from
emigrating to America. We hear language that singles out immigrants and
suggests that entire religious communities are complicit in violence.
Where does this stop? The Orlando killer, one of the San Bernardino
killers, the Fort Hood killer -- they were all U.S. citizens.

Are we going to start treating all Muslim Americans differently? Are we
going to start subjecting them to special surveillance? Are we going to
start discriminating against them because of their faith? We’ve heard
these suggestions during the course of this campaign. Do Republican
officials actually agree with this? Because that's not the America we
want. It doesn't reflect our democratic ideals. It won’t make us more
safe; it will make us less safe -- fueling ISIL’s notion that the West
hates Muslims, making young Muslims in this country and around the world
feel like no matter what they do, they're going to be under suspicion
and under attack. It makes Muslim Americans feel like they're government
is betraying them. It betrays the very values America stands for.

We've gone through moments in our history before when we acted out of
fear -- and we came to regret it. We've seen our government mistreat our
fellow citizens. And it has been a shameful part of our history.

This is a country founded on basic freedoms, including freedom of
religion. We don't have religious tests here. Our Founders, our
Constitution, our Bill of Rights are clear about that. And if we ever
abandon those values, we would not only make it a lot easier to
radicalize people here and around the world, but we would have betrayed
the very things we are trying to protect -- the pluralism and the
openness, our rule of law, our civil liberties -- the very things that
make this country great; the very things that make us exceptional. And
then the terrorists would have won. And we cannot let that happen. I
will not let that happen.

Two weeks ago, I was
at the commencement ceremony at the Air Force Academy. And it could not
have been more inspiring to see these young people stepping up,
dedicated to serve and protect this country. And part of what was
inspiring was the incredible diversity of these cadets. We saw cadets,
who are straight, applauding classmates who were openly gay. We saw
cadets, born here in America, applauding classmates who are immigrants
and love this country so much they decided they wanted to be part of our
armed forces. We saw cadets and families of all religions applaud
cadets who are proud, patriotic Muslim Americans serving their country
in uniform, ready to lay their lives on the line to protect you and to
protect me. We saw male cadets applauding for female classmates, who can
now serve in combat positions. That’s the American military. That’s
America -- one team, one nation. Those are the values that ISIL is
trying to destroy, and we shouldn’t help them do it.

Our diversity and our respect for one another, our drawing on the
talents of everybody in this country, our making sure that we are
treating everybody fairly -- that we’re not judging people on the basis
of what faith they are or what race they are, or what ethnicity they
are, or what their sexual orientation is -- that’s what makes this
country great. That’s the spirit we see in Orlando. That’s the unity and
resolve that will allow us to defeat ISIL. That’s what will preserve
our values and our ideals that define us as Americans. That’s how we’re
going to defend this nation, and that’s how we’re going to defend our
way of life.

It was a violation of the Kentucky Open Meetings Act for Gov. Matt Bevin to send state police to a May 19
meeting of the Kentucky Retirement Systems board of trustees and
threaten to arrest the board chairman if he participated, Attorney
General Andy Beshear said in an opinion released Tuesday.

Bevin sent police with his chief of staff, Blake Brickman,
and Personnel Secretary Thomas Stephens to threaten to arrest Thomas K.
Elliott, whom Bevin has been trying to remove from the board, and to
interfere with board leadership elections scheduled for that day,
Beshear said. Several armed troopers stood in the KRS board room during
the day’s meeting.

Another board member who
was interested in running for chairman, Vince Lang, was warned by
Stephens that “the administration would immediately initiate an
investigation” if he sought the post, Beshear said. The board decided to
postpone its leadership elections because of pressure from the
governor’s office and police, Beshear said.

Public agencies must be allowed to conduct open meetings free from harassment, Beshear said in his opinion.

“A
behind-closed-door indication of arrest if a board member attempts to
participate, or of an investigation of a board member who potentially
may seek election as chair, made with the intent to alter decisions or
behavior related to a public meeting for public business, violates the
mandate that public business not be conducted in secret,” Beshear said.

“Moreover,
the presence of multiple law enforcement officers, who can effectuate
an arrest, at the request of someone other than the agency head or a
quorum of the board, equates to conducting public business through
force. Neither scenario has a place in a democratic government that must
be open,” he said.

Why does Bully Bevin care about the Board that oversees the state employee retirement system? Because that board decides how to invest billions of dollars in state worker contributions, and Bevin's billionaire buddies are out there slavering to get their talons into that money.

Read the rest if you care about how Bevin lied in response, and just how infantile he sounds lobbing playground insults at the Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Kentucky.

Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Last Monday, Akyra Murray, who turned 18 in January,
graduated third in her class of 42 students at West Catholic
Preparatory High School in Philadelphia, where she had also been a
1,000-point scorer on the basketball team. She had recently signed a
letter of intent to play basketball at Mercyhurst University in Erie.

"She was very loving, caring, out to help anybody," her mother, Natalie Murray, recalled.

To celebrate her graduation, Akyra, her parents and her 4-year-old sister traveled to Orlando for a family vacation.

On Saturday, Murray told her parents she wanted to party in downtown Orlando. They dropped her off at Pulse at 11:30 Saturday night.

At
about 2 a.m., Akyra Murray sent a text message to her mother, saying
that she and her cousins wanted to be picked up. She said there had been
a shooting.

Moments later, the phone rang.

"She was saying she was shot and she was screaming, saying she was losing a lot of blood," Natalie Murray said.

Murray
said her daughter was hiding in a bathroom stall, cowering from the
shooter, her arm bleeding for hours with no medical treatment.

Sunday, June 12, 2016

I
don’t think he understands atheism at all. It doesn’t mean that
existence is random, since the universe actually has physical laws that
allow some predictability; if I mix hydrogen and oxygen gas, and apply a
spark, I’m going to get the release of a lot of energy fairly quickly,
and water. I won’t get bunny rabbits, or marzipan, or a sheet of
cellophane. That there is no ultimate meaning to life means I am free to
set my own goals, and I don’t have to worry about, for instance,
getting enslaved in a celestial choir after I die.

We can
establish an objective morality, based on human needs and desires, which
is far superior to a morality built on the arbitrary caprice of an
imaginary deity (or, more accurately, the self-serving demands of the
imaginary deity’s priests). Death is just an end, and while endings are
to be avoided, they are a part of our existence. That believers think
they will be reunited with loved ones after death does not mean that
they will. Finally, I’d rather see justice in this life, where it
counts. I also do not consider the Abrahamic idea of justice at all just
— murderers are to be tortured with endless misery for all of eternity?
Really? You consider that justice?

SNIP

I
don’t expect my answers to please Prager. He has intentionally composed
a pair of questions for which he has his pat answers, and he’s not
asking out of honest curiosity to find out how atheists think — he’s
just looking for excuses to reject atheism. It’s as if he asked the
question, “What is 1 + 1?”, so that he could sneer at all the ignorant
materialists who answer “2”, by informing them that obviously the answer
is “3”, gosh aren’t atheists dumb?

But then, this is the kind of thing I’ve come to expect of dishonest religious apologists.

Saturday, June 11, 2016

Articles like this can only be written by people who don't live every fucking hour of every fucking day surrounded by white supremacists whining about how oppressed they are.

Perhaps it would be wise to be a bit more charitable to these folks, a little more patient and understanding.

A
bleeding-heart liberal acquaintance almost died in a fire deliberately
set by her psychopathic adopted son. Six years old, and he'd been
displaying violent behavior since he could walk. But never suffered any
kind of discipline for it. I asked her what she was going to do about
his fire-setting, and she said she hadn't even criticized him, much less
punished him, because she didn't want him to "grow up afraid."

I
said: "I want him to grow up afraid. I want him to spend every minute
terrified that he's going to spend the rest of his life in prison."

That
psychopathic little shit is American conservatives, and his mother is
liberals like Martin Longman, insisting we keep forgiving and coddling
and understanding them.

As if doing that consistently for the last 70 years has not been the biggest political failure in American history.

You
cannot - CANNOT - change the behavior of a psychopath, whether a
six-year-old or a million-moron movement. You can only confine them
where they cannot harm others.

But
their minority status is precisely why they’re feeling so anxious and
angry, and there’s no reason to fear that they’ll somehow constitute an
electoral majority (by themselves) in November. If calling Trump on his
racism and misogyny makes these folks love him more, it’s not an
electoral problem. Their views are on the margin as it is.

What’s
problematic is how this affects our culture, and the fissures that are
opening in our society are causing a gridlocked government where
consensus on issues large and small has become illusive.

It
might be healthier for our country if there were a little more space
for alternative views before they get shut down as obviously racist and
intolerant, but it’s hard to be gracious and patient with people who are
trying beat you politically so that they can continue to discriminate
against our nation’s most vulnerable people.

On
the other hand, while it may be hard, it’s also part of the recipe for
political and cultural success. When you meet firehoses and billy clubs
with love and a shining humanity, you will eventually win. And, before
too long, most of your oppressors will come to respect what you’ve done.

Ask
American gays how politely asking conservatives and repugs to grant
them human rights achieved marriage equality without having to drag the
motherfuckers all the way to the Supreme Court.

Ask
Hillary Clinton how 25 years of ignoring and rising above the rabid
hatred that spews from the right-wing swamps has turned that hatred into
republican respect and admiration for her accomplishments.

Ask President Obama how constant, non-stop compromise with repugs who
publicly called him a terrorist and a traitor got the American Jobs Act
passed, and the Economic Stimulus extended, and Medicaid expanded in red
states, and unanimous support for efforts to stop climate change.

This is not the 1960s, when racists could be shamed into letting Congress pass the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act.

This
is the 21st century, when conservatives and repugs represent an
immediate and lethal threat to very survival not just of American
democracy, but of the nation itself.

You don't fight a genuine existential threat with sweetness and light. You fight it with overwhelming force.

Or you inaugurate Donald Trump today.

Why is it always on people of color and progressives to be the bigger person?

I
don’t know. But there are real limits on how much you accomplish by
meeting intolerance with intolerance. And it’s hard to be patient with
angry people or to win them over with an attitude of moral superiority.
That’s why love for your neighbor and setting the right examples are
still the best answers.

Yet the spirit of the GOP presidential candidate has surfaced here and, according to one study, in schools across the country.

An online survey of approximately 2,000 K-12 teachers by the Southern
Poverty Law Center found toxic political rhetoric invading elementary,
middle and high schools, emboldening children to make racist taunts that
leave others bewildered and anxious.

“We
mapped it out. There was no state or region that jumped out. It was
everywhere,” said Maureen Costello, the study’s author. “Marginalized
students are feeling very frightened, especially Muslims and Mexicans.
Many teachers use the word terrified.” The children who did the taunting
were echoing Trump’s rhetoric, she said. “Bad behavior has been
normalized. They think it’s OK.”

More than
two-thirds of the teachers in the survey reported that students –
especially immigrants, children of immigrants and Muslims – have
expressed worries about what might happen to them or their families
after the November election. More than half reported an increase in
uncivil political discourse, and more than a third observed an increase
in anti-Muslim or anti-immigrant sentiment.

I'm
sure Longman thinks those children should be encouraged in their
vicious hatred. Because that will make them such valuable citizens.

Friday, June 10, 2016

Shame
on everyone who ever fell for the scam that public services should be
"run like a business." A business does not serve the public. A business
rakes in profit for its owner(s.) Public services - like hospitals and
universities - do not rake in profits. Its owners are the taxpaying
public to which the public entity provides services.

The two are not the same and cannot work together. This is fucking obvious, people, and always has been.

Privatization is an unholy partnership between anti-government conservatives and greedhead corporations sucking up tax dollars for bad service.

A
leading University of Louisville surgeon says staffing cuts at U of L
Hospital since a private company took over its management have made it
unsafe, and that the hospital has "never been worse" in his 34 years at
the facility.

In an email to the university's
top health officials, Dr. J. David Richardson, vice chair of surgery
and the current president of the American College of Surgeons, says the
hospital is facing "major" safety issues, reported The Courier-Journal (http://cjky.it/1PiCGFg).

The
hospital is poorly staffed at night, resulting in emergency room
crowding, Richardson said. The Intensive Care Unit, he said, is
understaffed as well.

Furthermore, Richardson
said it's "virtually impossible" to do clinic research in the hospital.
One approved study was canceled last week because of inadequate nurse
staffing, resulting in a "major embarrassment" for the hospital, he
said.

The only solution, according to
Richardson, is to cut ties with the company that took over hospital
management in 2013 and laid off several employees shortly thereafter.

"They are destroying the hospital," Richardson said of KentuckyOne Health.

The job
of the commission is to nominate candidates for appointment by the
governor as judges who rule in workers' compensation cases. And on May 9,
Bevin issued an executive order that abolished the existing commission
(with former Gov. Steve Beshear appointees) and re-established a new
commission with his own appointees.

But a 16-page order from Judge Phillip Shepherd on Wednesday suspends Bevin's executive order "pending a final judgment on the merits of this action."

Shepherd's
order specifically bans the new appointees named by Bevin from
nominating candidates for judgeships, and it prohibits Bevin from
appointing any workers' comp judges other than those nominated by the
prior commission, until further orders of the court.

The
case raises "important issues concerning the scope of a Governor's
reorganization power," Shepherd said. And he said the effect of Bevin's
order must be held up until "a full and careful judicial review of
whether the Governor's action complies with the separation of powers
provisions of the Kentucky Constitution and the statutes."

But the judge also expressed strong concerns about Bevin's order.

"It
appears from the record before the Court at this time that the primary
purpose and effect of the Executive Order is to implement a mass firing
of Commissioners, rather than to accomplish a bona fide administrative
reorganization," Shepherd wrote.

Monday, June 6, 2016

Governor Lying Coward did not have a single word to say about the death of one of the most consequential Kentuckians who ever lived. Unfortunately, some "news" outlets are attributing to Bevin a statement from the extremely obscure Kentucky Boxing and Wrestling Commission:

"The
Kentucky Boxing and Wrestling Commission extends its
deepest sympathy to the family of Muhammad Ali. Ali was more than just
the three-time heavyweight champion: he was the Greatest. We are so
proud to call him a native son and will work hard to advance the sport
he loved. Rest in peace, Champ."

Democratic Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer was not afraid to publicly mourn Ali, ordering flags lowered to half-staff throughout the city. But from conservatard repug Bevin we got no statement, no flag-lowering order, just crickets.

For the man whose radical patriotism changed the nation and the world.

Ali was attending a rally for fair housing in his hometown of Louisville when he said:

Why
should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home
and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in Vietnam while so-called
Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human
rights? No I’m not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn
another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave
masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such
evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take such a stand
would cost me millions of dollars. But I have said it once and I will
say it again. The real enemy of my people is here. I will not disgrace
my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who
are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality…. If I thought
the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my
people they wouldn’t have to draft me, I’d join tomorrow. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I’ll go to jail, so what? We’ve been in jail for 400 years.

Damn.
This is not only an assertion of black power, but a statement of
international solidarity: of oppressed people coming together in an act
of global resistance. It was a statement that connected wars abroad with
attacks on the black, brown and poor at home, and it was said from the
most hyper exalted platform our society offered at the time: the
platform of being the Champ. These views did not only earn him the
hatred of the mainstream press and the right wing of this country. It
also made him a target of liberals in the media as well as the
mainstream civil rights movement, who did not like Ali for his
membership in the Nation of Islam and opposition to what was President
Lyndon Johnson’s war.

But
for an emerging movement that was demanding an end to racism by any
means necessary and a very young, emerging anti-war struggle, he was a
transformative figure. In the mid-1960s, the anti-war and anti-racist
movements were on parallel tracks. Then you had the heavyweight champ
with one foot in each. Or as poet Sonia Sanchez put it with aching
beauty, “It’s hard now to relay the emotion of that time. This was still
a time when hardly any well-known people were resisting the draft. It
was a war that was disproportionately killing young Black brothers and
here was this beautiful, funny poetical young man standing up and saying
no! Imagine it for a moment! The heavyweight champion, a magical man,
taking his fight out of the ring and into the arena of politics and
standing firm. The message was sent.” We are still attempting to hear
the full message that Muhammad Ali was attempting to relay: a message
about the need to fight for peace.

Full
articles can and should be written about his complexities: his fallout
with Malcolm X, his depoliticization in the 1970s, the ways that
warmongers attempted to use him like a prop as he suffered in failing
health. But the most important part of his legacy is that time in the
1960s when he refused to be afraid. As he said years later, “Some people
thought I was a hero. Some people said that what I did was wrong. But
everything I did was according to my conscience. I wasn’t trying to be a
leader. I just wanted to be free.” Not the fight, the reverberations.
They are still being felt by a new generation of people. They ensure
that the Champ’s name will outlive us all.

Bill
Russell said it best in 1967. “I’m not worried about Muhammad Ali. I’m
worried about the rest of us.” That is more true than ever.

Shame on you, Governor Pants-Shitter. You aren't fit to shine Ali's shoes. And don't you DARE attend the funeral.

Gov. Matt Bevin today
congratulated Pilgrim’s Pride Corp., a leading poultry producer, on
announcing a $24 million project to increase production and create about
140 jobs for Kentuckians at its Graves
County plant.

140 jobs for Kentuckians so desperate for work they will accept minimum wage to slave on a dead meat assembly line for 10 hours without a bathroom break.

A new report
by Oxfam America, an arm of the international anti- poverty and
injustice group, alleges that poultry industry workers are "routinely
denied breaks to use the bathroom" in order to optimize the speed of
production. In some cases, according to the group, the reality is so
oppressive that workers "urinate and defecate while standing on the
line" and "wear diapers to work." In others, employees say they avoid
drinking liquids for long periods and endure considerable pain in order
to keep their jobs.

The
findings are the result of hundreds of interviews with line workers
from some of the largest poultry processing companies in the United
States, including Tyson Foods, Pilgrim's, and Perdue. And they bring the
current state of the poultry industry into serious question.
Competitive forces, they suggest, are driving poultry processors to
produce as much meat as possible, as fast as possible, leading companies
to mistreat their workers, even if unknowingly.

Today,
poultry processing plants are allowed to funnel chickens through their
assembly lines at a rate of 140 birds per minute, a rate which the
industry recently lobbied to increase by another 35 birds per minute.
The speed has been great for business, but for those working on the
line, it has made for extremely taxing shifts. Just ask Debbie
Berkowitz, a senior fellow at the National Employment Law Project who
used to work with the government agency that oversaw industry practices.
On Wednesday, she published a piece in response to the new report. This is how she described the conditions:

In
my work at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, I
witnessed the dangers: poultry workers stand shoulder to shoulder on
both sides of long conveyor belts, most using scissors or knives, in
cold, damp, loud conditions, making the same forceful movements
thousands upon thousands of times a day, as they skin, pull, cut, debone
and pack the chickens. The typical plant processes 180,000 birds a day.
A typical worker handles 40 birds a minute.

Tyson and Perdue responded to the report with denials. Pilgrim just refused to comment. Great Bluegrass values at Pilgrim, Governor Pants-Shitter!

About Me

"Blue" in Blue in the Bluegrass refers to my politics, not my state of mind, although being progressive-democratic in Kentucky is not for the faint of heart.
The Bluegrass Region of Kentucky is Central Kentucky, the area around Lexington. It's also sometimes known as the Golden Triangle, the region formed by Louisville in the west, Cincinnati in the north and Lexington in the east-south corner. This is the most economically advanced, politically progressive and aesthically beautiful area of the state. Also the most overpopulated by annoying yuppies and the most endangered by urban sprawl.
A Yellow Dog Democrat is one who will vote for even a yellow dog if it is running as a Democrat. I can't claim to be quite that fanatically partisan, especially since quite a few candidates who run as Democrats in Kentucky are more Republican than a lot of Republicans I can name.
But I do love the story Kentucky House leader Rocky Adkins never tires of telling about the old-timer in Eastern Kentucky who was once accused of being willing to vote for Satan if Satan ran as a Democrat. Spat back the old-timer:
"Not in a primary, I wouldn't!"
Amen.